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Memoirs & Diaries - A Wireless Operator

At the age of eighteen I
crossed to France early in 1917, a sapper in the Royal Engineers Wireless
Section. We operators had only a vague idea of our likely duties, for
the Wireless Section was only then becoming of use in the trenches.

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I was sent via St. Pol to
Arras, and with a fellow-operator was led into the trenches at Roclincourt.
There I first experienced the bursting of a shell near me, and I laughed at
the frightened manner in which our guide flung himself down when the shell
fell about thirty yards away. It was not long before I took to
flinging myself down on such occasions.

When our guide led me into
a trench filled waist deep with muddy water, I could not believe he was
serious - and I hesitated - I was wearing brand-new riding-breeches,
puttees, and boots. However, I waded in, and it was seventeen days
before my boots touched dry soil again.

We were left in a muddy
dug-out at Roclincourt with an officer and his batman, waiting for the
attack. We spent our time experimenting with a small British Field set
- the Trench set - and we still had no idea of our purpose.

Then, on April 5th, we were
called into Arras where a R.E. officer "put us wise". The attack was
to be made within the next few days, the infantry waves were to advance
under cover of a formidable barrage, and each wave was to be provided with a
wireless station. The Roclincourt station was to go over with the
first infantry wave.

The Roclincourt station!
That was Hewitt and I and an officer! Four infantrymen were to assist us in
carrying our weighty apparatus, the set, accumulators, dry cells, coils of
wire, earth mats, ropes, and other details.

We returned to Roclincourt
and sent many practice messages to our Directing Station at Arras.
That night one of our aerial masts was shattered and we were instructed to
erect another. We had no reserve mast, but, fortunately, we found a
large crucifix nearby.

"That's it," said the
officer. "Hewitt, climb up there and attach the aerial as high as
possible."

Hewitt clambered up over
the figure of Christ just as a German machine gun swept the line, the Verey
lights revealing Hewitt distinctly. He soon fell into a depth of
slime, frightened, but unhurt. It was our first experience of enemy
machine-gun fire.

"You try," the officer
pointed to me.

It is an eerie sensation to
climb over an effigy of Jesus, to dig your feet into any parts of the figure
offering foothold, to hold on to the outstretched arms, and breathe on to
the downcast face, to fix a rope somewhere on the Cross and to hear the
German machine gun tat-tatting all around.

Failing to secure the rope,
I slid down and we returned to the dug-out with our officer extremely
annoyed. Early the next morning we secured the aerial to the ruins of
a building. On April 7th our officer laid a plan of the German sector
opposite us on the table, and he detailed our instructions.

At a particular tree-stump
far over in the enemy's Blue Line we were to erect a station as rapidly as
possible and transmit any messages handed in by the officers engaged in the
attack.

I felt intensely relieved
that I was to be given an opportunity of doing something useful, and of
feeling that at last I was to playa real part in the Great War. I
found that Hewitt, too, experienced this sense of relief.

On the evening of the 7th
some letters came up. There was one from my father telling me he had
bought a new bicycle, a Raleigh, for "when I came home". It affected
me strangely, and when I mentioned the new cycle in the dug-out, our officer
grunted "some hopes!" When I considered our immediate future I must have
echoed the sentiment.

Our officer's nerves were
rather frayed that evening. Perhaps in the infantry he had led many
attacks, perhaps he had been badly knocked about before he came to us.
We didn't know; nobody seemed to know much about him.

Through the night we waited
for the signal. One o'clock, two, three, four (or was it five?) ...the
barrage started! A roar all along the line. Then suddenly, with a
similar "snap" to that with which it started, the barrage stopped.
Sunday, April 8th, dawned and passed without the attack having been made.
Had a change of plans taken place?

Sunday night - further
infantry poured into the trenches, slowly, nervously, pressing along.
All was tense... no laughter, no jesting, no conversation. There was
no doubt that the attack would take place on the morrow.

All night the muddied
figures stood outside our dug-out; inside we sat, each with his load close
at hand. Apart from wireless material we carried ground sheets, rifles
(unloaded!) I bandoliers, each holding fifty rounds, gas masks, iron
rations, and our clothes.

At 3.30 a.m. we went out
into the trenches, eight in all: the officer, his batman, two operators, and
four infantry carriers. We threaded our way along the crowded trenches
as best we could until we reached a company of Tyneside Scottish.
There we waited.

The silence remained tense,
more awful than ever. Everyone "standing to" awaiting the barrage and
the signal!

4 a.m. The barrage
opened with a mighty roar and there it fell incessantly just across the
waste. "Go!"

Over the top we clambered,
over the stricken wilderness we stumbled. We wireless "merchants"
mixed with the infantry, hoping for some protection.

We carried no
bayonets, our unloaded rifles were strapped across our backs and our only
means of defence was apparently fists. Why wireless operators were not
allowed to load their rifles we never learned.

We attained the enemy
lines. Jerry was engaged in peaceful domestic functions! Some washing,
others making coffee, and many had to be awakened to be taken captive.
The blow had fallen before they expected it.

It was not long, however,
before the German defences, the colossal barrage tearing into their
supports, were roused to a fierce retaliation. Heroic and desperate
Germans mounted machine guns, and knowing they could not withstand our
onslaught they exacted a heavy toll for their own lives.

One enemy sergeant I saw
shot twenty of ours before he was bayoneted in his back. Then a rain
of spluttering ferocious shrapnel fire came over from the German artillery
and "heavy stuff" crashed into us.

The waves of our infantry
became somewhat disorganized owing to the difficulty of moving over the
heavy, pitted land and to the congestion of the German prisoners, who were
dazed by their good fortune in being taken.

The second wave passed -
the third - the fourth, and soon the well-defined waves were
indistinguishable.

We wireless "Blokes"
struggled on with our burdens, aiming, of course, for the tree-stump by the
Blue Line. When daylight came we found we were only seven - our
officer, carrying no burden, had hurried on with the leading infantry-men.

Through the hours we
continued stumbling, sinking, slipping, into old trenches, shell holes, all
the time in the midst of a scattered but advancing infantry.

Noon - we still struggled,
overburdened with wireless parts. The wounded were limping or being
carried in, the thousands of prisoners formed long, straggling processions,
the dead lay unnoticed.

At 12.30 we reached the
tree-stump. Our officer stood in a deep trench scowling at us.

"Get into communication at
once, I have messages here." He waved a sheaf of papers in his hand.

Hewitt
and I immediately set about erecting a 60-yard aerial on 18-foot masts.
It was an uneasy task erecting this fully exposed to the vicious enemy fire.
Actually I counted afterwards ten men who had been killed outright by
shrapnel near us, as we secured the masts.

Presently we dropped into
the dug-out allotted us and we tuned in for our D.S. I was told to operate.
At length I heard D.S. "Wait," he said. He was dealing with
early morning codes from other corps.

At length I seized my turn
and transmitted as many messages as I could before I lost my priority.
I continued sending messages at intervals (but listening-in all the time)
until 8 p.m., when our work died down, land-line communication having been
established.

But the officer forbade me
to get up.

"Continue listening-in.
Hewitt will relieve you at midnight".

So I sat huddled on a box
in a narrow tunnel with the candle-lit set before me and the telephones
tightly gripping my ears. In the dug-out the officer, his batman, and
Hewitt sat, while in a stifling den underneath the dug-out the four
infantrymen rested.

On this part of the
Hindenburg line the trenches were "double-deckers". Sometimes my back
touched the clay wall behind me, and my eyes; when turned from the set,
blinked into clay - clay everywhere. Two candles flickered above the
set, resting on bayonets stabbed into the clay.

Just on the side of the
set, away from the dug-out, the tunnel had been shelled, and it opened into
the yawning shell hole. Deep in this a young, handsome Tyneside
Scottish soldier lay dead. His feet pointed upwards, his body lay on
his back with his face upturned. He was not more than five yards from
me.

The
night air became chill and the rain drizzled. I asked Hewitt to string
up some sacking.

I wanted it for two reasons - to reduce the draught and to help me forget
the dead soldier lying there. Presently the others curled themselves
up, and their snores soon assured me that they were asleep. I remained
listening-in for a possible emergency call.

10.30 p.m. An eerie
silence on the ether, pierced only by atmospherics crackling in my ears.
As the time went on the strange quietude became ghastly, and all the time,
the Tyneside soldier lay there, just the other side of the sack, his eyes
probably still gazing blindly to the darkened skies.

A wind sprang up, blowing
The sacking in towards me, as though some enfeebled soul pressed against it.
Sometimes the wind lifted a corner of the sack, and I peered through into
the darkened shell hole.

The rain became sleet, and
it turned to snow. I knew because the snow soon attained sufficient
weight to bear down lumps of earth, and fugitive flakes drifted into the
tunnel.

12 o'clock. Hewitt's
turn! Was it worth his listening-in? Perhaps I would get instructions to
close down any minute... pity to wake him! I decided to continue the watch
myself. (I should have stated before that Hewitt suffered from cramp
in his right elbow and our officer had no confidence in his operating, hence
the long watch that fell to me.)

1 o'clock. I was
really cold now. Snow and mud rolled into the tunnel from the shell
hole, and the sacking became insecure. And then D.S. told me to close
down.

I tried to sleep, but my
weird imprisonment in the tunnel had disturbed me. I could not
sleep... perhaps the Tyneside soldier prevented it.

I
suppose I dozed, for I awoke to find faint gleams of daylight peeping down
the stairway.

The others were soundly
asleep. I got up and went outside.

A snow-covered wilderness!

All was still. Not a
gun shot, not a voice, not a living person in sight.

The sun was about to rise,
and I watched fascinated.

As the yellow sun became
flushed so the disappearing snow revealed the toll - the countless black
lumps lying everywhere in the mud. The snow soon thawed on the
Tyneside soldier, and he seemed as tragically beautiful as he had appeared
the previous day.

The silence continued.
The silence of a winter morning in the fields of Gloucestershire.
Where the war of yesterday?

The sun soon sipped up all
traces of the snow, and all was naked again - shambles, mud, desolation!

Silence, profound, unreal.

Then suddenly as though
from nowhere a faint, lazy, approaching whistle-bang! A big German shell
burst at my back.

The spell was ended, the
silent drama wrecked, for, taking up the challenge, our artillery renewed
its articulation. I was once more back in the Great War.

I saw terrible sights
subsequently, endured cruel hardships. I saw the bones of snipers
hanging freakishly from ruined trees, headless bodies, bodyless heads, a
pair of soldiers, one British, one German, who had each bayoneted the other,
standing, dead, and other gruesome things.

But the experience that
stands out most vividly in my memory is that of the night when I sat in a
tunnel near a Tyneside Scottish corpse, and the miraculous dawn of the
following day.

B. Neyland served from
September 1916 to December 1919: Sapper, Royal Engineers (Signals), Wireless
Section. In France, January to June 1917, all this time in the Arras
district. As wireless operator, took part in several attacks, wounded
by shell splinter and home to Blighty, June 1917. On recovery sent to
Ireland to help in the erection and maintenance of an almost unused wireless
(military) service.